This is the website/blog of Philosopher Stephen Law. Stephen is Provost of Centre for Inquiry UK, Reader in philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London, and editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy journal THINK. He has published several books (see sidebar). His other blog is THE OUTER LIMITS: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/blibnblob
For school talks and media email Stephen: think-at-royalinstitutephilosophy.org
Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/swlaw?ty=h

Monday, August 4, 2014

Religion and Philosophy in Schools

Religion and philosophy in schools

Stephen Law

Is philosophy in schools a good
idea? The extent to which early exposure to a little philosophical thinking is
of educational benefit is, of course, largely an empirical question. As a
philosopher, that sort of empirical study is not really my area of expertise.

But of course
there is also a philosophical dimension to this question. As a philosopher,
conceptual clarification and the analysis of the logic of the arguments on
either side certainly is my field. That is where I hope to make a contribution
here.

This essay is in
two parts. In the first, I look at two popular religious objections to the
suggestion that all children ought to be encouraged to think independently and
critically about moral and religious issues. In the second part, I explain a
well-known philosophical distinction – that between reasons and causes – and
give a couple of examples of how this conceptual distinction might help
illuminate this debate.

PART ONE: Two popular religious objections

Philosophy in the classroom
involves children thinking critically and independently about the big
questions. These questions include, of course, questions about morality and the
origin and purpose of human existence, questions such as: “Why is there anything
at all?”, “What makes things right or wrong?” And “What happens to us when we
die?” These questions are also addressed by religion. The subject matter of
philosophy and religion significantly overlap.

Where there is
overlap, there is the possibility of disputed
territory. Proponents of philosophy in the classroom may find themselves
coming into conflict with at least some of the faithful. While many religious
people are enthusiastic about philosophy in the classroom, there are also many
who are either totally opposed to it, or else want severely to restrict its
scope. Some Christians, Muslims and Jews consider the introduction of
philosophy an unwelcome intrusion into parts of the curriculum that have
traditionally been theirs. They have developed a whole range of objections.

I want to look at two very popular
objections to the suggestion that all children should be encouraged to think
critically and independently about moral and religious questions. The first is:

To encourage a thinking, questioning attitude
on these topics is to promoterelativism.

The second is:

Parents have a right to send their child to a school where their religious beliefs
will not be subjected to critical scrutiny.

Here is an illustration of both worries
being expressed simultaneously. In 2004, the U.K.’s Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) proposed that all
children should be exposed to a range of religious faiths and atheism, and also
that they be taught to think critically about religious belief. The IPPR
recommended that

[c]hildren with strong religious
beliefs would be encouraged to question them and to ask what grounds there are
for holding them… Pupils would be actively encouraged to question the religious
beliefs they bring with them into the classroom...[i]

What the IPPR proposed is, in
effect, a form of philosophy in the classroom: the philosophical examination of
religious belief.

Many
religious people were entirely comfortable with this proposal. But not all. The
Daily Telegraph ran a leader a leader
condemning the IPPR’s recommendations. Here is Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips quoting from it approvingly:

As [this] Telegraph leadercomments, this is nothing
other than yet another attempt at ideological indoctrination: 'It reflects the
belief that parents who pass on the Christian faith are guilty of
indoctrinating their children, and that it is the role of the state to stop
them. The IPPR and its allies in the Government are not so much interested in
promoting diversity as in replacing one set of orthodoxies by another: the
joyless ideology of cultural relativism.'’[ii]

Here we find both of the
concerns mentioned above expressed simultaneously. Surely parents have a right
to send their children to a school where their religious beliefs will be
promoted without being subjected to this sort of independent critical scrutiny.
The state has no right to interfere. And in any case, isn’t encouraging such
critical thought itself a form of indoctrination – in this case, indoctrination
with the poisonous dogma of relativism?

The charge of relativism

I’ll consider that
charge of promoting relativism first.

Relativism, as Melanie Philips and the Daily Telegraph use the term, is the
view that the truth in some particular sphere is relative.

Some truths
are indeed relative. Consider wichitti grubs – the huge larvae eaten live by
some aboriginal Australians. Most Westerners find them revolting (certainly,
the model Jordan did when she was recently required to eat one on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here).
But at least some native Australians find them delicious.

So what is the truth about wichitti grubs? Are they
delicious, or aren’t they? The truth, it seems, is that, unlike the truth about
whether wichitti grubs are carbon-based life forms or whether they are found in
Australia, there is no objective,
mind-independent truth. The truth about the deliciousness of wichitti grubs
is relative. For Jordan, that wichitti grubs are delicious is false. For
others, it’s true. When it comes to deliciousness, what’s true and false
ultimately boils down to subjective opinion or taste.

The relativist about morality insists that the truth of
moral claims is similarly relative. There’s no objective truth about whether
female circumcision, stealing from supermarkets, or even killing an innocent
human being, is morally wrong. Rightness and wrongness also boil down to
subjective preference or taste. What’s true for one person or culture may be
false for another.

The relativist about religious truth similarly insists
that the truth about whether or not Jesus was God. That Jesus is God is
true-for-Christians and false-for Muslims. The “truth” about religion is simply
whatever the faithful take it to be.

Often associated with relativism is a form of non-judgementalism – if, say, all moral
and religious points of view are equally valid, then we are wrong to judge those who hold different
moral and religious views.

This kind of relativism about truth is widely considered
to be eating away at the fabric of Western civilization like a cancer.It is supposed to deeply destructive – resulting in a
culture of selfish, shallow individualism in which personal preference trumps
everything and, ultimately, anything goes.

Relativism
it is certainly supposed to have infected many young people. Schools are often
blamed. Marianne Talbot of Brasenose College Oxford, says about her students
that they

have been taught to think their opinion is no better than anyone else’s,
that there is no truth, only truth-for-me. I come across this relativist view
constantly – in exams, in discussion and in tutorials – and I find it
frightening: to question it amounts, in the eyes of the young, to the belief
that it is permissible to impose your views on others.[iii]

The U.S. academic Allan Bloom wrote:

[t]here is one
thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering
university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.[iv]

The new Pontiff is also deeply concerned. He says,

We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which
does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal
one's own ego and one's own desires. (PS at time of writing Pontiff was Ratzinger)

Just last week, it was reported that the Ministry of Defence believes
that

the trend towards moral relativism
and increasingly pragmatic values [is causing] more rigid belief systems,
including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as
popularism and Marxism.[v]

Interestingly, when Nick Tate, head of the UK’s QCAA
(the U.K. body responsible for devising and assessing the national curriculum)
introduced compulsory classes in citizenship for all pupils attending
state-funded schools, he was explicit that one of his chief concerns was to
“slay the dragon of relativism”.[vi]

So,
relativism is supposed to be rampant. Where has it come from?

The roots of relativism

In the minds of many, the blame
lies with the Enlightenment and the
1960’s.Take the U.K.’s Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, for example. He places
particular blame on the Enlightenment philosopher Kant. Kant provides the
classic definition of Enlightenment. He says individuals should think
independently and make their own judgement, rather than defer more or less
uncritically to some external authority:

[Enlightenment
is the] emergence of man from his self-imposed infancy. Infancy is the
inability to use one’s reason without the guidance of another. It is
self-imposed, when it depends on a deficiency, not of reason, but of the
resolve and courage to use it without external guidance. Thus the watchword of
enlightenment is: Sapere aude! Have
the courage to use your own reason![vii]

It is no coincidence that “Sapere”
and “Aude” have been adopted as the names of two philosophy-for-children
organizations.

The Chief Rabbi
considers Kant’s thinking dangerous. He says that

according to Kant…[t]o do something because others do, or because of
habit or custom or even Divine Command, is to accept an external authority over
the one sovereign territory that is truly our own: our own choices. The moral
being for Kant is by definition an autonomous being, a person who accepts no
other authority than the self. By the 1960s this was beginning to gain hold as
an educational orthodoxy. The task of education is not to hand on a tradition
but to enhance the consciousness of choice.[viii]

It’s this Kantian rejection of any
external moral authority that might decide right and wrong for us- Kant’s insistence on the moral autonomy of the
individual - that is the root cause of our problems. It’s here that we find the
origin of today’s relativism. For to teach in accordance with this Kant’s
thinking, says Sacks, requires,

The British columnist, author and social
commentator Melanie Phillips concurs. “It seems reasonable,” she says “to
regard the Enlightenment as the defining moment for the collapse of external
authority”.[x]
The problem with Enlightenment thinking, argues Phillips, is that

instead
of authority being located “out there” in a body of knowledge handed down
through the centuries, we have repositioned it “in here” within each child.[xi]

Because each individual “has become their
own individual arbiter of conduct” so relativism and the view that “no-one else
[is] permitted to pass judgement” have become the norm.

For
Sacks, Phillips, and many other religious conservatives, Kant’s “Sapere Aude!” – the battle cry of the
Enlightenment – lies at the very heart of the West’s “moral malaise”. It is not
surprising, then, that Phillips would oppose the IPPR’s recommendations that
children be encouraged to think critically about their own religious beliefs
and traditions.

According to Sacks, Phillips, and very
many others, encouraging children to
think independently, particularly about moral and religious matters, is
precisely what got us into the awful mess in which we now find ourselves.
They believe the time has come to move back in the direction of the
traditional, authority-based moral and religious education that tended to
predominate before the 60’s.

Philosophy
for Children promotes relativism?

I have sketched out just one of the many
reasons social and religious conservatives will give when explaining their
hostility to the suggestion that all children ought to be encouraged and
trained to think critically even about moral and religious beliefs. Such encouragement,
they claim, promotes relativism. But
need it?

No. In my book The War For Children’s Minds, I deal with this sort of objection –
as well as many others – in much greater detail. Here I will merely sketch out
three very obvious reasons why to encourage and teach children to think
critically even about morality and religion need not entail the promotion of
relativism and non-judgementalism.

1.Relativism entails no point to thinking
critically. If
relativism were true, there would be no
point in engaging in the kind of critical thinking that proponent of
philosophy in schools recommend. For if relativism is true, the belief that you
arrive at after much very carefully critical thought will be no more true than
the one you started with. Those who recommend we think critically about the Big
Questions – including moral and religious questions – even from a young age are,
in effect, opposed to relativism
insofar as they think that this sort of activity is able to get us closer to
the truth.

2.Philosophy can combat relativism. Secondly, a philosophy for children
programme is free to include critical discussion of relativism. A little close
critical scrutiny is able pretty quickly to reveal precisely why the usual
politically-motivated arguments for relativism (such as that only relativists
can promote tolerance) are, frankly, awful. I believe children should have the
failings of moral relativism explained to them. That should form part of their
education.

3.Relativism and respect for religious
authority. Thirdly,
there’s at least anecdotal evidence that, rather than relativism being a
product of a thinking, questioning culture, embracing relativism may be a
strategy teachers embrace in order to avoid
thinking critically about – and, in particular, questioning the authority of – any given religious tradition. If a
teacher is required to teach a range of faiths, children are likely to spot
that they contradict each other, and will inevitably ask, “Which is actually true? Is Jesus God, as Christians claim,
or merely a prophet, as Muslim’s claim?” Suggest that one religion must be
mistaken and phone calls may ensue (“My daughter has been told the Pope might
be mistaken”). Embracing relativism provides teachers with an easy escape from
this dilemma. They can say “That Jesus is God is true-for-Christians, but
false-for-Muslims”. Religious relativism conveniently makes all religious beliefs come out as true.
As Marilyn Mason (former chief education officer for the British Humanist Association) here explains, rather than promoting
relativism, clear philosophical thinking is actually well placed to combat this sort of shoddy, relativistic
thinking.

I used to wonder where my students’ shoulder shrugging
relativism and subjectivism about knowledge came from, though I think I now
know: talk of “different truths” or “subjective truth” seems to have become the
accepted RE way of demonstrating tolerance and mutual respect when confronted
with differing and sometimes conflicting beliefs and views on morality or the
supernatural… Here is an area where the clear thinking characteristic of
philosophy at its best would surely help.[xii]

Regarding the last two points, I should
add, incidentally, that I do not mean that children should simply be told that
they must more-or-less uncritically accept that relativism is twaddle. The idea
is not to encourage independent critical thought about everything… except, er,
relativism. But I see no reason why children cannot be given the very good
arguments against relativism (which, presented correctly, are engaging and very
easy to grasp) to reflect on at an appropriate stage in their development.

I
should perhaps also add that the kind of philosophy for children programme I
would recommend is not, then, an exclusively hands-off affair in which topics
are always chosen by children, in which children are never taught basic skills,
positions and styles of argument, and in which the supposedly “philosophical”
discussion is allowed to the form of little more than a free association of
ideas, with little, if any, logical structure or rigour.

While I am enthusiastic about class
discussions on the P4C model (which are often excellent), I think they probably
need to be paired at some stage with some teaching of the basic skills,
arguments and positions – including relativism. (This is not to say I favour a
dry semi-academic approach either – I think we need to develop new, engaging
ways of teaching skills, arguments and positions.)

I don’t deny, of course, that this sort
of teaching would need to be carried out by people who are at least reasonably
competent in the area, by teachers who, for example, are well-versed in the
arguments for and against relativism. Nor do I deny that an intellectually
flabby “philosophy for children” programme might inadvertently end up promoting
relativism. But there is certainly no necessity that philosophy in the
classroom should promote relativism. As I say, done correctly, philosophy in
the classroom is actually well-placed to combat
the kind of relativism that is allegedly carrying Western civilization all to
hell in a hand basket.

A
parental right to philosophy-free religious and moral education?

Now let’s turn to the second objection I
mentioned at the beginning of this section – that parents have a right to send their child to a school
where their religious beliefs will not be subjected to critical scrutiny.

Of course, many who favour philosophy in
schools will agree with this. They may say “I believe philosophy in schools is
a very good idea, but I don’t think it should be forced on religious parents if
they don’t want it.”

My view is that is that the IPPR
recommendations are sound: all children
should, without exception, be
encouraged to think critically – and thus philosophically – even about the
moral and religious beliefs they bring with them into the classroom. Religious
parents should not be able to opt out.

I am not going to attempt to make a
positive case for that perhaps rather illiberal-sounding assertion here. I am
just going to offer a challenge to those who, like Phillips and the Daily
Telegraph, believe that schools that promote a religious faith in a wholly
uncritical way are acceptable.

Suppose political schools started
springing up – a neoconservative school in Billericay followed by a communist
school in Middlesbrough. Suppose these schools select pupils on the basis of
parents’ political beliefs. Suppose they start each morning with the collective
singing of political anthems. Suppose portraits of their political leaders beam
down from every classroom wall. Suppose they insist that pupils accept, more or
less uncritically, the beliefs embodied in their revered political texts. If
such schools did spring up, there would be outrage. These establishments would
be accused of educationally stunting children, forcing their minds into
politically pre-approved moulds. They’re the kind of Orwellian schools you find
under totalitarian regimes in places like Stalinist Russia.

My question is, if such political schools are utterly unacceptable, if they are guilty
of educationally stunting children, why on Earth are so many of us still
prepared to tolerate their religious equivalents? Why, if we cross out
"political" and write "religious", do these schools
suddenly strike entirely many of us as acceptable?

Assuming that Phillips and he Daily Telegraph would consider such
political schools unacceptable irrespective of the desire of parents to send
their children to them, the onus is surely on them to explain why we should
consider their religious equivalents rather more acceptable – indeed, even desirable.

One move they might make would be to say
that our political beliefs are clearly far too practically important – they are
far too likely to have a concrete impact in terms of the kind of society we
live in – to be left in the hands of the indoctrinators. Religious beliefs, on
the other hand, are more other-worldly, and so less of a concern.

But this would be to overlook that
religious beliefs are often intensely political. Clearly, religious
points of view on homosexuality, charity, a woman’s place in the home,
abortion, the State of Israel, jihad, and even poverty and injustice, are all
political. There are few aspects of religious belief that don’t have an
important political dimension.

In
which case, my challenge becomes sharper still: if such authoritarian political
schools are unacceptable, then why are their religious equivalents acceptable, particularly
as these religious schools are often themselves highly political?

Conclusion

Clearly, an enlightened,
liberal approach to moral and religious education of the sort recommended by
the IPPR can be conducted in religiously-affiliated schools. It is not
incompatible with a religious upbringing. Teachers at a Christian school, for
example, might say “This is what we believe, and these are the reason why we
believe it. Obviously we would like you to believe it to, but not just because we tell you to. We
want you to think and question and make up your own minds.”A school can
have a strong Christian ethos even while encouraging independent critical
thought- indeed, even while promoting philosophy in the classroom.

I don’t yet see that that the appeals to either
relativism or to parental rights justifies either the conclusion that
philosophy in the religious classroom is largely undesirable or the conclusion
that it be made, at best, an optional extra.

PART TWO: Reasons and causes

In this
second part of this essay, I want to make a well-known philosophical
distinction – that between reasons and causes – and then draw out a couple of
conclusions concerning philosophy in the classroom.

Reasons and causes

People’s
beliefs can be shaped in two very different ways, as illustrated by the two
different ways we might answer the question “Why does Jane believe what she
does?”

First, we might offer Jane’s
reasons and justifications – the grounds of her belief. Why does Jane believe
our CO2 gas emissions are causing global warming? Well, she has seen
the figures on how much CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere, and
she has seen the graphs based on Antarctic ice cores showing how global
temperatures have closely tracked CO2 levels over the last 600,000
years. So, concludes Jane on the basis of this evidence, the rising
temperatures are very probably a result of our CO2 emissions.

Another example: why does Jane
believe there is a pencil on the table in front of her? Because there appears
to be a pencil there. She remembers just putting a pencil there. And she has no
reason to suppose that there’s anything funny going on (that she’s
hallucinating, the victim of an optical illusions, or whatever).

Of course, explaining why someone
believes something by giving their grounds or reasons is not yet to say that
they are good reasons. Mary may believe she will meet a tall, dark, handsome
stranger because that what a psychic hotline told her.

So we can explain beliefs by giving
people’s reasons. But this is not the only way in which beliefs can be
explained. Suppose John believes he is a teapot. Why? Because John attended a
hypnotist’s stage-show last night. John was pulled out of the audience and
hypnotized into believing he is a teapot. The hypnotist forgot to un-hypnotize
him, and so John is still stuck with that belief.

Of course, John needn’t be aware of
the true explanation of why he believes he is a teapot. He may not remember
being hypnotized. If we ask him to justify his belief, he may find himself
oddly unable. He may simply find himself stuck with it. He may well say, with
utter conviction, that he just knows
he is a teapot. In fact, because such non-inferentially-held beliefs are
usually perceptual beliefs, it may seem to John that he can see he’s a teapot. “Look!” he may say,
sticking out his arms “Here’s my handle and here’s my spout!”

So we can explain beliefs by giving
a person’s reasons, grounds and
justifications, and we can explain beliefs by giving purely causal explanations (I say purely causal, as reasons can be causes
too[xiii]).

Purely causal explanations range
from, say, being hypnotized or brainwashed to caving in to peer pressure or
wishful thinking. These mechanisms may even include, say, being genetically predisposed to having
certain sorts of belief (it has been suggested by Daniel Dennett and others
that we are, for example, genetically predisposed to religious belief).[xiv]

A blend of reasons and
causes…

Of course, both kinds of
explanation may be relevant when it comes to explaining why Sophie believes
that P. Sophie may believe that P in part
because there is some evidence for P,
though not enough to warrant belief in P, and in part because she is, say, biologically predisposed to believe P.
It may be that neither factor, by itself, is sufficient to explain Sophie’s
belief.

We may well flatter
ourselves about just how rational we are. Sometimes, when we believe something,
we think we’re simply responding rationally to the evidence, but the truth is
we have been manipulated in a purely causal way. I might think I have decided
that sexism is wrong because I’ve recognized the inherent rationality of the
case against it, when the truth is that I have simply caved in to peer pressure
and my unconscious desire to conform.[xv]

Brainwashing

So there are two ways
in which we might explain belief. There are, correspondingly, at least two ways
in which we might seek to induce belief in someone. We might attempt to make a
rational case, try to persuade them by means of evidence and cogent argument.
Or we might take the purely causal route and try to hypnotize, apply peer
pressure, etc. instead.

One
of the most obvious ways of engaging in purely causal manipulation of what
people believe is, of course, brainwashing. Kathleen Taylor, a research
scientist in physiology at the University of Oxford who has published a study
of brainwashing, writes that five core techniques consistently show up:

One
striking fact about brainwashing is its consistency. Whether the context is a
prisoner of war camp, a cult’s headquarters or a radical mosque, five core
techniques keep cropping up: isolation, control, uncertainty, repetition and
emotional manipulation.[xvi]

The isolation may involve
physical isolation or separation. Control
covers restricting the information and range of views people have access to,
and includes censorship. Cults tend endlessly to repeat their beliefs to potential converts. This repetition may
include, for example, very regular communal chanting or singing. Under uncertainty, Taylor discusses the
discomfort we feel when presented with uncertainty: by providing a simple set
of geometric certainties that cover and explain everything, and also constantly
reminding people of the vagaries and chaos of what lies outside this belief
system, cultists can make their system seem increasingly attractive. Emotional manipulation can take many
forms – most obviously the associating positive feelings and images (e.g.
uplifting or serenely smiling icons) with the belief system, and fear and
uncertainty with the alternatives.

Of course, the
extent to which these techniques are applied varies from cult to cult. Clearly,
they are also be applied by non-religious cults and regimes. A school in Mao’s
China or under the present regime in North Korea would almost certainly check
all five boxes.

I note (though Turner doesn’t), simply as a
point of fact, that religious schools of
the sort that tended to predominate in this country up until the 1960’s also
very clearly check all five boxes.[xvii]

That these and other purely causal
mechanisms are effective at influencing belief even outside a cult’s
headquarters or a prisoner of war camp is surely undeniable. We are all very
heavily influenced by them. The success of the advertizing industry is
testimony to their effectiveness. Indeed, many advertising campaigns check
many, if not all, of the Taylor’s five boxes for brainwashing.

When challenged on this, the industry
typically insists that it is merely “informing” the public - providing good
reasons and evidence on which consumers can base a rational, informed choice.
Nevertheless the main tools of the advertizing trade are for the most part
purely causal. An advertisement for soap powder, lipstick, a car or a loan
typically contains very little factual information or argument. The power of
these adverts to shape our thinking and behaviour is mostly purely causal –
they play on our uncertainties and rely very heavily on repetition and
emotional manipulation.

The question of balance

That such purely causal mechanisms are going shape what people
believe is something that is, to some extent, unavoidable. Even in a very
liberal educational setting in which philosophy is involved, there will
inevitably many purely causal factors also influencing belief. Certainly, we
should admit that a classroom is not wholly given over to the space of reasons.
All sorts of causal and psychological pressures are applied, knowingly and
unknowingly, within a school. This may even, to a very significant extent, be
desirable.

The question is how these purely influences
should be balanced against giving
reasons and justifications, encouraging rational reflection, and so on.

Now I would suggest
that the extent to which religious people tend to favour or oppose the
introduction of philosophy in the classroom (and the extent to which they would
recommend a return to more traditional religious educational methods) tends to a very large extent to correspond
with the degree to which they prefer reliance on techniques that are, in
effect, purely causal.

Philosophy in the classroom is of course
about thinking critically and independently about many of the same issues in
which religion has a stake. Free and open discussion, in which all views are
open to close critical scrutiny (religious views included) means operating
within what Wilfred Sellars called “the logical space of reasons”.

On the other hand, while traditional
religious education might also involve a degree of free discussion (typically
with certain parameters: children may be subtly or not so subtly steered away
from asking certain sorts of question or making certain sorts of point), it was
generally orientated far more towards purely causal techniques of influencing
belief. Daily repetitive acts of worship, repetitive prayer, isolation form
other belief systems (including physical isolation from those who hold them),
control over the range of materials children have access to (such as writings
critical of that faith), the punishment of those who dare to question (a
colleague of mine educated in a Catholic School in the 1960’s was punished
simply for asking why the Catholic
Church opposed contraception) and emotional manipulation (associating “all
things bright and beautiful” with the faith, images of moral chaos and hell
with the alternatives) – these techniques were the mainstay of religious
education.

So while every style of moral and religious
education inevitably involves a blend of both engaging children’s rational,
critical faculties and (whether or
not intentionally) applying purely causal mechanisms, one of the fundamental issues
dividing proponents of philosophy in the classroom from religious
traditionalists is how these two
ingredients should be balanced.

Truth-sensitivity

I
want now to look at some of the ways in which reason-involving educational
methods differ from purely causal mechanisms for shaping belief. Let’s begin
with truth-sensitivity.

One
interesting fact about these two ways of getting someone to believe something
is that, generally speaking[xviii],
only one istruth-sensitive.

The
purely causal mechanisms of isolation, control, repetition, uncertainty and
emotional manipulation, for example, can be used to induce the belief that
Paris is the capital of France. But they can just as easily be applied to
induce the beliefs that Paris is the capital of Germany and that Big brother
loves you.

The
attractive thing about appealing to someone’s power of reason, by contrast, is
that it strongly favours beliefs that are true.
Cogent argument doesn’t easily lend itself to inducing false beliefs. You are
going to have a hard time trying to construct a strong, well-reasoned case
capable of withstanding critical scrutiny for believing that Swindon is
inhabited by giant wasp-men or that the Earth’s core is made of cheese.

Sound
reasoning and critical thought tend to act as a filter on false beliefs. Of
course, the filter is not foolproof – false beliefs will inevitably get
through. But it does tend to allow into a person’s mind only those beliefs that
have at least a fairly good chance of
being correct.

Indeed,
unlike the purely causal techniques of inducing belief discussed above, the use
of reason is a double-edged sword. It cuts both ways. It doesn’t automatically
favour the teacher’s beliefs over the pupil’s. It favours the truth, and so
places the teacher and the pupil on a level playing field. If, as a teacher,
you try to use reason to persuade, you may discover that your pupil can show
that you are the one, not the pupil,
who is mistaken. That’s a risk some “educators” are not prepared to take.

Causal vs normative determination

Some
post-modern thinkers insist, of course, that “reason” is just a term used to
dignify what is, in reality, merely another purely causal mechanism for
influencing belief, alongside brainwashing and indoctrination. Reason is no
more sensitive to the “truth” than these other mechanisms (for of course there
is really no truth for it to be sensitive to). Reason is, in reality, just
another form of power – of thought control. It is essentially as coercive as
any other mechanism.

But
this is to overlook the fact that while a rational argument can in a sense
“force” a conclusion on you, the “force” involved is normative, not causal.

Causal
determination determines what will
happen. For example, given the causal power of these rails to direct this
train, the train will go Oxford.
Indeed, it is causally forced or compelled to. Normative determination, on the
other hand, determines not what will
happen, but what ought to. It is an
entirely distinct kind of determination involving an entirely different sort of
“compulsion” or “force”.

A
rational argument shows you what you ought
to believe if you want to avoid contradiction and give your beliefs the best
chance of being true. Take this valid deductive argument:

All
men smell

John
is a man

Therefore,
John smells.

To recognise that this
argument is valid, is just to recognize that if you believe that all men smell,
and that John is a man, then you ought to
believe that John smells. But of course this argument doesn’t causally compel you to accept that
conclusion even if you do accept the premises. You’re
free to be irrational.

This isn't to
deny that rational arguments have causal power. Of course they do. A good
argument can have the power to change history (consider the wonderful arguments
of Galileo, or the campaigner against slavery William Wilberforce). But when
rational arguments have the causal power to shape people’s thinking, they
typically have it as a result of their having normative power. People change
their opinions precisely because they recognize the normative force of the
argument.

[Notice, by the
way, that we can easily demonstrate that a rational argument doesn’t have
normative power simply in virtue of its having the causal power to shape
people’s thinking (though critics who fail to understand the difference between
normative and causal determination or "force" will obviously miss
this point). The obvious counter-example is fallacious
argument. A fallacious argument lacks any normative power. But notice that,
if the fallacy is seductive, it will still have considerable causal power to shape belief.]

So rational arguments have causal powers. But that is not to say that rational argument is in reality just another purely causal mechanism alongside e.g.
brainwashing and peer pressure.

So
far, I have stressed how rational argument differs from purely causal
mechanisms for influencing belief. In particular, rational argument is
truth-sensitive, while purely causal mechanisms are typically not. Also,
rational arguments, while also possessing causal power to shape belief,
typically have this power typically in virtue of their normative power. The
kind of “determination” a rational argument “imposes” on us is normative, not
causal. Rational argument is certainly not a form of coercion or manipulation
in the way that the purely causal mechanisms are.

Let’s
now develop that last point a little further. As I explain below, it seems to
me that rational argument allow for a form of freedom in a way that purely causal mechanisms are not.

When
you use reason to persuade, you respect the other’s freedom to make (or fail to
make) a rational decision.[xix]
When you apply purely causal mechanisms, you take that freedom from them. Your subject may think they’ve made an entirely free and rational decision, of
course, but the truth is that they’re your puppet – you’re pulling their
strings. In effect, by ditching reason and relying on purely causal mechanisms
– peer pressure, emotional manipulation, repetition, and so on – you are now
treating them as just one more bit of the causally-manipulatable natural order
– as mere things.

Kant on “respect for persons”

On
one of the formulations of his categorical imperative, Kant says that we ought always to treat both others and
ourselves always as ends in themselves, and never purely as means to an end. We
should not treat others or ourselves in an entirely instrumental way, as we
might treat a screwdriver or car, to get the result we want. We should have
“respect for persons” – for their the inherent freedom and rationality, which,
according to Kant, is what distinguishes them from mere things.

Here’s
an illustration (not Kant’s) of the kind of respect Kant has in mind. Suppose I
need food to feed my starving children. I might get food from the local shop by
lying – by saying that I will pay for it next week knowing full well that I
won’t. Or I might try to get food by honestly explaining my situation to the
shopkeeper and hoping she will be charitable. In both cases, I “use” the
shopkeeper to get what I want. But, unlike the first option, the second does
not involve using the shopkeeper purely
as a means to an end. I respect her rationality and freedom to make her own
decision about whether to provide food without payment. Kant says that only the
second option shows the shopkeeper the proper respect she is due as a person.
The first treats her purely instrumentally, as if she were merely a thing.

Avoiding
the purely causal route so far as influencing the beliefs of others is
concerned is, presumably, one of the things that Kant would insist on. Indeed,
if Kant is right, it seems that reliance
on purely causal mechanisms to shape belief also involves a fundamental lack of
respect for persons.

How to influence belief?

It is undeniable that,
as educators, we do want to influence
children’s beliefs. Influencing beliefs is not all there is to education,
not by a very long way. But that this is one of the things we are interested in
doing in the classroom is surely undeniable. We don’t want to send children out
into the world believing that a woman’s place is behind the sink, that it’s
morally acceptable to torture animals, that Jewish people are untrustworthy, or
that the entire universe is just six thousand years old. Well I don’t, anyway.

So let’s admit that we want to
influence what children believe[xx].
The question is: how?

My central aim in the second part of
this paper has beento show how the philosophical distinction between
reasons and causes can help illuminate this question.We have seen that rational argument differs
from taking the purely causal route in at least three important ways:

(ii)while rational argument’s can
be causally powerful, their causal power typically derives from their normative power – which is categorically
distinct non-causal form of “power”.

(iii)Rational argument allows for an
important form of freedom - a freedom
that the purely causal mechanisms actually strip from us.

We have also seen that religious traditionalists lean rather more
towards purely causal mechanisms for influencing belief then do proponents of
philosophy in the classroom. Indeed, this is one of the fundamental issues,
perhaps the fundamental issue,
dividing them.

How the distinction can illuminate the debate

To finish, I want to provide a
couple of examples how thinking about the debate between proponents of
philosophy in the classroom and religious traditionalists in these terms might
shed some light on some of the arguments offered on either side.

1. A temptation

First, the distinction
makes a little clearer, perhaps, why taking the purely causal route can be tempting. When you open up debate and
critical discussion, you run the risk that people won’t believe what you want
them to believe. If we suppose that certain beliefs are very important indeed,
perhaps even vital for the survival of Western civilization, well then the temptation
to take the purely causal route can become very strong indeed.

For
example, some argue that whether or not religious belief is true, it is
socially necessary. Remove it, and society will eventually fall apart. So we
must rely on traditional religious education to instill it. Bring reason into
religious education, and, given its truth-detecting power, the falsity of
religion might be exposed. The results may be disastrous. American
neo-conservatives typically take this view.

Clearly,
at least some of these kinds of concern deserve to be taken seriously.

2. Muddling reasons and causes

Secondly, a failure
properly to understand this distinction may lead defenders of traditional
religious educational techniques to think that their methods are, in essence,
really not so very different to what proponents of philosophy in the classroom
have in mind. At bottom, aren’t both really just forms of
causing-people-to-believe-what-you-want-them-to-believe? As we saw above,
Melanie Phillips considers what the IPPR
proposes (critical scrutiny of religious beliefs in the classroom) to be, just
“another attempt at ideological indoctrination”.
In Phillips’ mind, philosophy in the classroom is not an alternative to
indoctrination. It’s just a different
kind of indoctrination.

It
is certainly in the interests of religious opponents of philosophy in the
classroom to obscure the distinction between educating within the logical space
of reasons, and educating via the purely causal route. In particular, it is in
their interests to obscure the fact that the distinction raises some very
fundamental questions about freedom,
and also about what Kant calls “respect for persons”.

That many proponents of traditional
religious educational methods (who would oppose philosophy in the classroom)
fail fully to realize the extent to which they are applying purely causal
mechanisms to induce belief is also indicated by the fact, were the beliefs in
question political, not religious – and were the techniques being applied in
political schools rather than religious schools – they would consider these
same techniques “brain-washing”.

That
many of the faithful simply don’t recognize that their preferred educational
methods come at least very close to brainwashing is, I suspect, largely due to
fact that - within the religious setting of convent schools, madrassas, etc.
and, of course, within their own upbringing (“After all, it never did me any
harm”) - these techniques have acquired the rosy glow of the comfortably
familiar.

[xv]
That what we believe, or at least what we will say we believe, is shaped far
more by peer pressure than we might imagine was suggested by the experiments of
Solomon Asch back in theearly 50’s
(Asche found that, in order to avoid being out of step with what their peers
believe, the majority of his subjects denied what was clearly before their
eyes). See Asch, “Effects of group pressure upon
the modification and distortion of judgments”, in H. Guetzkow (Ed.), Groups, Leadership and Men: Research in
Human Relations (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press, 1951). pp. 177-190.

[xvii] Incidentally, fact that many of those who have been through this
kind of traditional religious schooling, despite not being able to rationally
justify or defend their belief, will often insist (like Bert who was hypnotized
into believing he is a teapot) that they “just know” that what they believe is
true – that, indeed, that this truth seems to be revealed to them via a sort of
quasi-perceptual (i.e. religious) experience
– would largely be explained by the fact that these kinds of purely causal,
manipulative techniques were applied to them throughout childhood (though of
course this is not yet to say that this is explanation is correct).

[xviii]
Some purely causal mechanisms are truth sensitive. For example, a thermometer
is a fairly reliable mechanism for indicating temperature. Similarly, our
perceptual mechanisms are fairly reliable mechanisms for producing true
beliefs. The “track the truth”, as it were.

[xix]
Someone might raise the worry: If we are physically determined, then we don't have
free will, and if we don’t have free will, then we cannot make free rational judgements
and decisions after all.

Well, yes, perhaps there is, for the above reason, a
sense in which none of our judgements are “free”.But there remnains a sense, I think, in which
rational persuasion allows for a kind
of freedom that the purely causal mechanisms strip from us. And this kind of
freedom might be compatible with e.g. physical determinism.

In fact, given that rational argument does not causally (typically) determine what you
believe, rational argument (I can still maintain) does allow for a kind of freedom that purely causal mechanisms take from
us. It's just that maybe something else - physical determinism, then takes even
that freedom free us. But maybe it doesn't. It's an interesting question that I
am simply going to bracket here.

[xx]
Those who say they don’t want to influence belief may well do so because they
have themselves lost sight of the distinction between operating within the
logical space of reasons and taking the purely causal route. To try rationally
to persuade a child is, in their minds, just another form of oppressive thought
control. But of course, as we have just seen, it is not.

Your suggestion is that "all children ought to be encouraged to think independently and critically about moral and religious issues." Isn't that a paradoxical goal? If children are to think 'independently' then there can be no prompting by adults, but children don't arrive at school a blank slate, nor is it realistic to expect them to learn 'independently' without adult guidance and supervision. I know of one famous liberal school that tried to do just that (by, for example, letting pupils decide which classes to attend each day, if any), but all it succeeded in doing was produce illiterate children, who probably lacked self-discipline and were ill-equipped to deal with authority figures.

On the other hand, if children are guided and supervised in their 'independent thinking', then how are they thinking 'independently'? Another problem is that children have childish thoughts. All the 'critical thinking' in the world will not produce wisdom without experience. Much of the process of imparting wisdom to children involves training them to obey rules they cannot fully understand and appreciate, until they look back in later years. For example, children are taught self-denial. To a child, this seems like pointless cruelty. To an adult who has learned the value of self-discipline, it makes perfect sense.

So how is thinking 'independently' about moral issues going to help children come up with genuine solutions, and what does 'independent' mean in this context? Another issue is how far are adults willing to let children think 'independently', when even adults are not allowed to question 'politically correct' beliefs that are often easily falsified by empirical evidence? As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. You may find your pupils rebelling against the very ideas and values that you hold dear.